This week we sat down with Christian Holmes on our team of optimization analysts to learn more about his daily role and what he’s learned so far. Tell us about yourself! What’s your background? I’m originally from Connecticut and went to school in Vermont at Middlebury College. I graduated with a B.A. in Economics and Chemistry, and joined ChoiceStream shortly thereafter. What is your role at ChoiceStream? I’m an Associate Optimization Analyst. My team monitors the ad campaigns that ChoiceStream runs. This ranges from overseeing campaign launches to ensuring that each campaign delivers in full, with even spend throughout the month in a way that works best for our platform. For instance, we often run our campaigns slightly ahead at the outset. This allows us to gather information that helps optimize our system’s real-time bidding (RTB) decisions. In addition to monitoring pacing, I also ensure that our delivery and performance

Attribution, in the context of digital advertising, is a measurement by which advertisers assess their media plans and quantify the success of consumer touch points in ultimately contributing to a sales conversion. Conversion types vary from one industry to another, as well as from one campaign to the next, but here are some examples: product purchases, site visits, quote starts and finishes, membership applications, information requests, and other kinds of form fills. To review, the sales funnel (in the eyes of a brand), or buying journey (in the eyes of the consumer), consists of various phases that can broadly be split up into two: original awareness and then later conversion. As a consumer, think of something that you recently purchased after giving it some thought. What initially sparked your interest? Let’s say that you live in New England, and somewhere in between all of the storms, you realized that your jacket

As shovels scrape sidewalks, snow plows rumble past, and cars skid out of their spots, it is clear: Boston is in a state of crisis. It is in situations like this that people are faced with a reality new and different from their norm. They become forced to make quick decisions and react accordingly. With all of this snowfall, snow removal, and stress, there are a few lessons that mirror programmatic advertising. Adaptability and Patience There’s no question that storms like Juno, Linus, Marcus (and counting…refer to the weekly weather forecast) have forced New Englanders to be adaptable. Drivers maneuver their way around parking bans to find a home for their vehicles, only to have to dig their cars out after the onslaught of bright, heavy blankets of white. Commuters have no choice but to work from home, while city workers rush to address the havoc that Mother Nature has wreaked. Meanwhile,

In 2015, the necessity of online advertising is indisputable among even the most adamant of former stamp-lickers and billboard lovers. Marketers are no longer faced with the question of if they should invest ad dollars online, but rather how and with whom should they do so? That’s a tough nut to crack in a crowded, confusing marketplace. Marketers from Boston to Timbuktu can relate to the ceaseless bombardment by ad-tech vendors touting the benefits of their cutting-edge solutions. When it comes down to actually choosing a vendor there are some specific questions you should ask, but let’s back up a bit first. Before you even think about what vendor to work with, it’s important to reflect on what problem you’re trying to solve and subsequently, the type of campaign you want to launch. In this blog post, we’ll explore different types of campaigns and the related problems they address to arm

Consumer Cost Insights From 2014 Guide Digital Advertisers in 2015 Today, we released a recap of consumer cost trends throughout 2014. Findings cover industry including Sports, Pets, Arts & Entertainment, Travel, Shopping, and Auto. Here are some highlights: In general, prices trended up throughout all of 2014. Changes in segment costs tended to align with digital advertising for associated brands and products (i.e. the Caribbean Travel segment rising in cost during months when cruise brands run national campaigns). From this, it can be drawn that brands today have a tendency to buy obvious third party segments to target audiences with their campaigns. While “programmatic” is a buzzword and the benefits of optimization are touted in industry talk, manual targeting still holds prevalence over advanced machine-learning practices. As advertisers move over to automated optimization systems, they will discover non-obvious correlations between segments and offers (i.e. Caribbean vacationers might skew toward shoe shoppers and wine

A Pollshare Case Study In the world of digital advertising, brands harness consumer data to display their offers to the right people. Companies incorporate their own first party data into the campaigns that they run online, as well as purchasing third party data and feeding that, too, into targeting criteria. While this is useful and helps to guide initial audience reach for programmatic campaigns, it can also be limiting. If a brand is launching a product to a new audience that it does not already have information on and that third party categories do not address, then that brand must turn to a research team or just launch and learn. This does not have to be the case. Brands have the ability to engage with consumers prior to the start of a campaign, to ask them what their preferences, behaviors, values, and/or opinions are. That’s right – directly ask consumers

Programmatic media-buying is well-known for its one-to-one nature, causing a common misconception that all types of programmatic campaigns target one consumer at a time. This is not the case; some do, others needn’t. When a brand clearly understands and can identify its audience, it may opt to pre-configure a campaign with targeting instructions. Marketers in this situation select a target audience, list of media to buy, and pacing instructions at the outset of the campaign. The one-to-one capabilities of real-time programmatic are used only to filter out the impressions that don’t match the predetermined buy. This practice of targeting a well-known and well-understood audience exists in two forms – retargeting and look-alike modeling – that are supplemented by true real-time optimization. Retargeting If a consumer has been on a brand’s website, then algorithms target the consumer with the same product or offer that he or she previously viewed online. Timing